t-5 coral lighting

hi, i have a 40 gallon tank that is 36" wide with the coral sitting on live rock at middle level with a double t-5 fixture 1 actinic blue and one 10k white t-5. now what i was wondering is if that is enough lighting for a pink torch coral and others?

 

should be halfway up and under the lights. you could upgrade the actinic bulb to a ATI blue plus t5 bulb for more PAR/growth and still get the glow.

www.reefgeek.com has the t5 bulbs.

 

It depends on how deep the tank is and the other corals that you have.

That actinic light really hurts the usable spectrum. I would replace it with an ATI blue plus which has 3 times the PAR. It produces a blue light instead of purple but will make your fluorescing corals pop.

If you have SPS then you will want a 4 bulb unit.

If you only have LPS and softies you may need to move the more light needy corals to the top parts of your rock.

 

it is 23and a half inches deep and all three are half way. thx for the help on the bulb. im kinda new what is sps and lps?

 

SPS is small polyp stony think acropora
LPS is Large polyp stony like your torch.

 

what would be considered small or large?

 

Large are torches, hammers, frogspawn, brain corals, cyphastrea, chalices, size wise i guess you could say anything over 1/8" in diameter, don't really know how they are divided exactly just how it looks to me.

Small are acros, montiporas, birdsnests basically corals that you have to look hard to find the polyp especially when retracted.

 

thx very much, i was wondering to... do i have to feed them? because at big als there is this liquid for corals which is food.

 

What brand of bulbs are you running now? And what reflectors/ fixture or retro are you running?I can say that even with only 2 bulbs, LPS like your torch will probably be just fine. They don't need that much light to thrive.

I only had 3x 39 w of t5ho (1 bulb more than your 40g) on a 90g and my LPS were very happy.